


To The Ends Of The Earth

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Developing Relationship, Episode Tag, F/M, X-Files OctoberFicFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: He doesn’t know where they’re going.  He doesn’t care.  They’re together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-FTF  
> A/N: From a tumblr prompt.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She’s holding his hand. He has, honestly, no idea what to do about that. Days ago, he nearly kissed her, or she nearly kissed him, and it was one of the most terrifying moments of his life, one way or another. One of the most blissful, nervewracking, heartrending, incredible moments of his life, and then almost immediately one of the worst moments of his life. He is tired of nearly losing her. He’s not sure how many more times he can bear it. 

He’s still shivering, even in his suit in the sun in the summer. He’s seen her shivering too. They’ve both been drinking more coffee since Antarctica. He’s been watching her lace her fingers around her mugs, just letting the warmth seep into her. He hopes his hand is is as soothing to her as the terrible coffee in the bullpen. 

“If I quit now, they win,” she said. He turns it over and over in his mind as they walk. He doesn’t know where they’re going. He doesn’t care. They’re together. They survived. They have their work. That’s all that matters to him anymore, Scully and the work. 

They walk side by side. He matches his longer strides automatically to her shorter ones. The heels help, he’s noticed, but on paper, in person, they’re a complete mismatch, he and Scully. Short and tall. Hard science and soft. Light and dark. When he was reading her file, when they first assigned her to the X-Files, he didn’t imagine she’d last past the end of the first case. Six years later, he can’t imagine doing the work with anyone else. 

Her fingers are smooth and cool against his. She feels delicate. He knows much, much better. 

“Where are we going, Scully?” he asks.

“Does it matter?” she asks. “Mulder, we just got back from the ends of the earth, and you don’t want to wander through DC with me?”

“We might get hungry,” he says. “But I’m in it until the ends of the earth, Scully.”

She squeezes his hand, the pressure of her fingers so quick and light that they can both pretend it didn’t happen, in their endless circuitous obfuscation of their own candelit hearts. He squeezes back; Morse code signals across the infinite space between them.

“They’ll keep trying to take the X-Files,” he says, thinking out loud. 

“We’ve got health and strength,” she murmurs. “We’ll steal the rest.” 

“Every time I think you can’t surprise me,” he says, “there’s always something else.”

“It’s something my grandmother used to say,” she tells him, looking up with those seawater eyes. His heart slops like high tide over a seawall; no matter how high he builds his defenses, love sloshes over them. Scully, like the moon, pulls at him in a predictable way that he nonetheless underestimates every day. 

“Ethiopian?” she suggests, looking away. She’s always had more self-control when it comes to this thing between them, whatever they’re not calling it today.

“You read my mind,” he tells her. He loves to watch her eat with her fingers, tearing off fussy, precise pieces of injera to scoop up the various stews. She’s easier to tempt with doro wat than with tandoori chicken; maybe injera seems healther than naan in her mysterious Scully hierarchy of foods. 

“We should get a taxi,” she says, but they keep walking, hand in hand, into their future, whatever it holds, because they’re together, and that’s enough.


End file.
